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If someone is saying to you that they feel hurt by your actions, especially if it is a person of colour telling a white, middle class male that what they said was racist, it would take a monumental amount of blind privilege to try to discuss anything other than "fuck, you're right, sorry".
saying that there was no racist intent behind something is a perfectly valid thing to say.
Still not an apology.
stevo_com-
indeed.
sounds about white to me.
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Maybe.
Run a thought experiment on bothwell's toe post.
What if someone found the comparison of a momentary accidental stepped on toe with their personal experience of a lifetime of prejudice deeply offensive?
It's easy to say bothwell should just go, "fuck, you're right, sorry". But is it just as likely they would try and first explain their reason/meaning for a number of genuine reasons. Maybe our offendee's reaction seems so far from Bothwell's intended point they can't believe the offendee has correctly taken it on board or correctly read it.
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if it is a person of colour telling a white, middle class male that what they said was racist
Not sure what class or gender have to do with this, unless you're suggesting that those characteristics are predictive of being racist?
Still not an apology.
That's the point. It's not meant to be, nor should it be. If someone is defending themselves against an accusation of racism, they can't start that discussion with an apology for being racist because (i) it completely concedes the point under discussion and (ii) it would be completely insincere because they don't believe they've done anything wrong.
What I'm saying that they can do is apologise for their choice of words ("Sorry, that was a clumsy choice of words and I should have been more careful to bear in mind the historical context of those words."), while being adamant that their point was something other than racial (as @hugo7 pointed out, the interpretation could seem to be so far from the intent that jumping straight to an apology isn't seen to be as useful as clarifying the intent). In that situation what they need to do is avoid the bullshit complete non-apology of "I'm sorry you feel that way" as if their choice of words had nothing to do with it.
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hugo7
ffm
Hang on, those are 2 very different things. Saying that you had a lapse of judgement can be part of an apology; essentially, "sorry I made a mistake". Trying to explain why something "isn't racist" is a hiding to nowhere, but saying that there was no racist intent behind something is a perfectly valid thing to say.
Part of the problem here is people not being able to move forward with any kind of discussion unless the other person admits that they were a dick. Loads of people seem to feel that ending a discussion is preferable to doing the harder thing of tolerating the fact that the other person really feels that they haven't done anything wrong and still talking to them.